Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories Read Online Free Page B

Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories
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offer for you.” Devereux took a step
forward. “You could benefit from an alliance with me.”
    “Benefit?” She rolled her eyes. “I repeat, what did
you ever do for me?”
    “It’s what I can do for you. I can give you revenge.”
    This was new. No one had ever offered that before. Kade
watched his calm face carefully, intrigued. “Revenge on whom?”
    “The court, the king. The tricks you play on them,
however deadly, aren’t worthy of you. With my help, and the help of others that
I know--”
    “You want to use me against my royal relatives.” Kade
shook her head, disappointed, and added honestly, “It’s an audacious plan, I’ll
willingly give you that much. No man’s had the courage to suggest such a thing
to me before.”
    His face had hardened and she knew it had been a long
time since anyone had refused him anything. “But it is not to your taste, I
take it.”
    Kade shrugged. “If I really wanted to kill my mortal
brother I could have done it before now. What I want to do is make him and his
mother suffer, and I don’t think you or your supporters would agree to that. And
as soon as I wasn’t useful to you anymore, one of you would try to kill me,
then I’d have to kill one or more of you, and the whole mess would fall apart.”
She hesitated, and for some reason, perhaps because he was so comely, said, “If
you had approached me as a friend, it could have been different. Perhaps we
could have worked something out to serve your end.”
    But from his angry expression he didn’t recognize it
as the offer it was, or he felt it was a lie or a trap. Maybe it was, Kade admitted to herself. Maybe what she really wanted was something else
entirely, something Devereux simply hadn’t the character to offer her.
    “I suggest you reconsider,” Devereux said, his voice
harsh.
    She said dryly, “I suggest you stick to sorcery and
leave politics to those with the talent for it.”
    He stepped back, giving her a thin-lipped smile. “You
can’t leave. This room is warded with a curse. If you break the barrier, the
creature that loves you most in the world will die.”
    Relieved, Kade laughed at him as she slipped out the
door. Fay didn’t love each other, and there was no mortal left from her
childhood who didn’t want to see her dead. He had chosen this spell badly. “Curse
away. I’ve nothing to lose.”
    “I think you have!” Kade heard him call after her as she
ran through the tall grass. As she came around the side of the house, there was
a shout. Ahead in the darkness she saw moving figures and the glow from the
slow match of a musket. She swore and ducked.
    The musket thundered and there was a sharp crack as
the ball struck the stone wall behind her. If they hit me with that thing ,
Kade thought desperately, we’re all going to find out just how human I am .
The musket balls were cold iron, and her fay magic could do nothing to them.
    But that protection didn’t extend to the gunpowder
inside the musket. She covered her head with her arms and muttered the spell
she had considered using on Warrender in the inn.
    There was an explosion and a scream as someone’s
wheellock pistol went off, then a dozen little popping sounds as the scattered
grains of powder from the musket’s blast ignited.
    Kade scrambled to her feet. The grass near the gate
had caught fire and she was forgotten in the face of that immediate threat. She
ran to the back wall with its loose bricks and crumbling mortar and climbed it
easily. At the top she paused and looked back. In the glow of the grass fire
she could see Devereux walking back and forth, shouting at the servants in
angry frustration. Revenge against her royal relatives would have been sweet. But
it would never have worked, not with him, anyway , she thought with a
grimace. Too bad .
    * * *
    It was barely dawn when she reached the inn, and
through the windows she could see that candles had been lit in the common room.
From just outside the door she thought
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